{"id":1761,"date":"2008-05-06T22:16:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T02:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1761"},"modified":"2008-05-06T22:16:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-07T02:16:00","slug":"unite-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1761","title":{"rendered":"Unite the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose it shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone that the people who spent all election whispering \u201cno plan\u201d have put forward a plan of their own to (sort of) unite the left in Alberta. Here\u2019s what the Alberta Federation of Labour is proposing<\/a>:<\/p>\n

1) The Liberals, NDP and Greens would “divvy up” all Alberta ridings and agree not to run candidates against each other.<\/p>\n

2) The parties would maintain their autonomy and run their own election campaigns but would agree on a list of “core priorities to act upon if they are able to form a government after the next election.”<\/p>\n

3) If they form government, the parties would look at major electoral reform, possibly adopting a system of proportional representation for future elections where political parties would receive a percentage of seats based on their percentage of votes.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While this proposal might lead to a larger<\/em> opposition, it sounds like a recipe for perpetual opposition to me. I\u2019d also suggest that \u201cgiving up\u201d on a large chunk of ridings isn\u2019t the best way to build up a stronger grass roots organization.<\/p>\n

Even if you assume that 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, a \u201cunited alternative\u201d would have won\u2026wait for it\u202619 seats this March. Out of 83. Outside of Edmonton, the NDP and Greens (and in many ridings, the Liberals) just aren\u2019t in the game and vote splitting isn\u2019t the issue. Sure, this strategy would ensure a nice opposition caucus from Edmonton year in and year out but to actually form government there needs to be a more appealing alternative to voters. And my hunch is that a \u201cgiant left wing alliance\u201d isn\u2019t going to appeal to many voters in Alberta (then again, I have been away for a while – maybe things have changed).<\/p>\n

There may be some benefit in trying this out in 4 or 5 Edmonton ridings but, even then, when (if?) voters decide to toss the Tories, Edmonton won\u2019t elect a single PC MLA regardless of how the vote is being split.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good to see people bringing forward different ideas and I\u2019m glad to hear that \u201ceverything is on the table\u201d from an ALP perspective. But this idea would be one step forward and three steps back in my opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose it shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone that the people who spent all election whispering \u201cno plan\u201d have put forward a plan of their own to (sort of) unite the left in Alberta. Here\u2019s what the Alberta Federation of Labour is proposing: 1) The Liberals, NDP and Greens would “divvy up” all Alberta ridings and agree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}